


ode to a nightingale

by s0dafucker



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Dark Academia, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 14:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker
Summary: just a little smthn(im not the first person to write abt gay academics and reference ode to a nightingale so if u liked this i highly recommendhistory student falls in love with astro-physics studentand pretty boy by keaton st james bc he does romance like nobody else)





	ode to a nightingale

'brian,' he says, in a voice that says nothing at all, and oh, how it makes him ache.

'patrick.'

one deft pair of hands, two skilled sets of fingers, much sturdier than brian's, heartier, less prone to fits of trembling. the knot of his tie. it's a simple thing, but one that his hands could never master; perhaps they took hints from his mind, the confused muddle that glows like the full moon, the enchantress that she is, when patrick ties it for him. it's a flip and a tug, a complicated little two-step he never could quite figure out. (unlike the waltz, which he took to like a duck to water, a soldier to a trench, his own pale hands to the piano-)

'brian,' he says again, and his dark eyes- how they sparkle! from this angle they shine just so, fond and warm, the lines etched beneath them all the more endeared for it. 'i'm done.' one last adjustment, the lingering of those rough hands, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in that smile he so favors; and he takes a step back (right foot, follow with your left), hands to his pockets.

 _oh, patrick,_ brian wants to say, _the moments before you tie your hair back are my favorite in the world. i would give my life to burn that ribbon of yours._

 _oh, patrick,_ he wants to say, _those hands are the ones i want to hold my own from now until the end of time. i think i would die if i went without the sight of your eyes._

'thank you,' he says.

-

one layer tweed. one knit. one linen.

and then there's the matter of patrick's tie, though brian knows the things are easier to undo- it's a pity he hadn't pretended he couldn't do that, either. (the thought of patrick untying his careful windsor at the end of each day is a pleasant one, though he's not sure he could bear it.)

he teaches in a daze, as he always seems to as of late. (as of professor gill's joining the faculty.) the tail of a _y_ and the loop of an _l_ and the robin's-breast of an _s_ ; the chalk moves more gracefully than he, his voice faltering as it catches up. a charcoal sweater vest. the crisp line of his snow-white collar.

' _and, for many a time, i have been half in love with an easeful Death, call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, to take into the air my quiet breath-_ so keats loves death, yeah? he talks of him like you would a lover. _now more than ever it seems rich to die-_ yes, question?'

'is john keats…' the girl in the back row shifts in her seat uncomfortably, but brian nods his approval, his confidence, 'is he suicidal? since he's talking about death like that.'

'is he?' brian echoes. 'that's for you to decide. does keats love the idea of death, the romance of dying? or does he hold it up to the light only to reveal its shadow? does he show us the romance so we might also see the hopelessness?'

-

' _my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock i had drunk._ '

'you're as bad as the kids. you've got no enthusiasm.'

patrick smiles. 'maybe i'm a history teacher for a reason, professor gilbert.' he's perched atop a student's desk. he looks positively rakish.

'hm.' brian gnaws at his lip. 'try it again. have you ever done theatre?' patrick shakes his head. 'well, it's sort of like that. you aren't patrick gill when you read this- you're john keats, mellow and sickly and wishing to leave your life behind.'

'is that what it's about?'

'it's one theme to consider. transcendence of the self. the idea of-' brian leaves his desk to stand beside patrick, read over his shoulder and reach out to trace the words. '-the nightingale being emblematic of change. keats is faced with his own mortality, and the finite nature of himself. _where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies-_ his brother had just passed, when he wrote this. he's just realized how fleeting life truly is.'

-

' _thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! no hungry generations tread thee down; the voice i heard this passing night was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown,_ ' the kids are rapt. brian crosses his leg atop the other from his seat on the face of his desk; he looks up for effect, his eyes at their darkest and most wild. there's still a performer inside him. there always has been.

' _forlorn! the very word is like a bell, to tole me back from thee to my sole self!_ '

patrick rolls his shirtsleeves up to his elbows and sighs. brian's heart stammers. his sweater vest is brown. like sweetened coffee. like garden soil. like autumn leaves. like-

'brian.'

his eyes.

'brian-'

the sharp line of his nose, the furrowed crease of his brow, the strands of his hair that come loose to frame his face, those masculine planes of his face, the stubble brian imagines would feel like kind sandpaper if he were to capture those lips in an embrace-

'brian!'

'sorry! sorry, i- i haven't been sleeping much lately.'

patrick's scowl splits open to reveal something softer, concerned, and it makes brian's chest ache like nothing else.

he didn't _lie,_ he reminds himself later, picking absently at his cuticles; he hasn't slept soundly in years. he glances up to the desk patrick's begun to favor. why he can't grade papers in his own classroom is a mystery to brian- but he isn't going to complain.

-

his tie is coal-black, a starless sky; it makes him think of patrick, and so it feels right to watch his long fingers arrange it. there's a patch of white in patrick's beard where brian imagines his thumb would fit perfectly. a flip and a tug and the gathering of a jacket around himself. there's something so discrete here, the sunrise coming in the windows. the careful movement of patrick's rough hands. he told brian once that he grew up working in the mines. he's so young, to be so old. brian's heart aches, and a drowsy numbness-

-

there's a dead nightingale in his yard. he disregards it.

-

 _'that thou, light-winged dryad of the trees,'_ patrick whispers, the pads of his fingers on brian's lips, his cheeks. his eyes are molten. his hair is loose. brian reaches into it.

_'bright star, would i were steadfast as thou art-'_

'wrong poem,' patrick says, and then he is gone.

the nightingale lies dead.

brian picks a tie with hands that shake and sweat and then he puts it down. it's aubergine silk. he undoes the button at his throat. he redoes it. he chokes on it.

patrick's eyes find his adam's apple. there is no sunrise this morning. a chill has set in, a fog that should make brian uneasy but instead serves to blanket him, insulate him against the harsh light of day. the glare of patrick's glasses. he's buttoned up against the cold, jacket closed, sweater cable-knit and scarlet and thick- his gaze flicks up, from the bare curve of brian's throat to the deerlike pupils, and then there is the drawing together of his thick brows, something confused and wary.

brian won't tell him. the nightingale died, didn't it? like keats the younger. thomas, brian thinks his name was. john was with him 'til the end. tuberculosis, it was. wasn't it always. the nightingale died, but that doesn't mean a damn thing. patrick is still standing there. brian will tell him.

-

brian does not tell him. brian flees.

brian, for all his degree would have you believe, is stunningly inarticulate. the nakedness of his own throat startles him. he isn't sure what he meant by it. he's even less sure what patrick thought he meant by it.

a seduction, perhaps- to bare this seemingly vast expanse of skin, to mimic the carelessness with which patrick rolled up his sleeves to expose his wrists in brian's presence. mirroring. a parallel, a thematic echo.

or else a rejection- no tie 'round his neck, no collar soft and welcoming, no flustered professor gilbert at his classroom door asking if he could _please, borrow a tie? i was in such a hurry this morning._ nothing but gray windows and the sharp lines of brian's trousers with their creases, his jacket just so.

a student proposes that keats wanted to leave his life behind. 'i can't quite explain it,' she says, 'but there's this feeling of- of longing, i suppose. when he says _that i might drink, and_ _leave the world unseen-_ and the third stanza, all those things about disappearing and death. _where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyes despairs._ he seems so sad. like he needs something, but he can't ever have it.'

brian reaches up, distractedly, to run a finger over the button at his throat.

-

the sun is setting by the time he makes his way to patrick's classroom. his heart is pounding in his ears. he slips in the door like a ghost, because he's a coward.

these transitional times hold such an indescribable power; these movements of the sun, these golden moments where there is nothing but the dawn or the twilight. the stillness of it. finite transcendence. patrick's hair is down.

brian clutches a handful of ungraded essays to his chest. they're a pretense. he holds them like armor. (plausible deniability, isn't that always the way. a bachelor, he calls himself.)

'professor gill,' he says.

'brian.'

he sits down at a student's desk. patrick's eyes are hidden behind the curtain of his hair- and, oh, his hair. brian's skin crawls with the urge to thread his fingers through it. his heart jumps when patrick pushes it out of his eyes, his hand and his wrist and the lean muscles in his forearm, the veins and the scars and the harsh lines of it, the unapologetic shape of him.

and brian means to tell him. he _does,_ he means it with his whole being, his soul trembles with the effort of holding it in; and then the sun has set, and they are in the darkness together, and it is overwhelming, with the beauty of it, and he is going to tell him, it's on its way out of his mouth- and patrick announces he must be going.

'i have a cat to feed,' he offers as an explanation, and his hair is up again, his sleeves rolled down. brian nods.

-

patrick's calloused palms on his skin. the intensity of his stare, the silence of it. the blackness of his eyes. brian kisses him and he tastes of blood- brian chases it, the copper in the back of his throat, and it isn't until patrick starts to choke that he begins to pull away.

he coughs up something into brian's mouth, and it's hot and slick and brian gags on it; he sticks his fingers down his throat and pulls out a nightingale's head.

he wakes up sweating. his sheets are a tangled mess. he picks out a crimson tie. (it startles him, when he glimpses it in the drawer, and so he grabs it. the image of the nightingale will not fade away and so he will seize the nightmare in both hands. it will not frighten him.)

patrick's long fingers. another elegant windsor. it's a quiet sunrise, pink and soft. patrick's cardigan is lavender, and brian's eyes land on his throat, searching for a tie there- and the shirt is left unbuttoned, revealing the pale skin of patrick's throat. not _pale,_ exactly, not the way that brian is pale, the unblemished porcelain of a man who majored in english and worked in a grocery store- but somehow softer than the rest of him, delicate. a secret that only brian is privy to. patrick's eyes flick up to him, dark and gleaming. there is something there, something warm and questioning. he searches brian's gaze. it's vulnerable, to be looked at, despite the fact that you are also the one doing the looking- and yet perhaps it is just that; to know that however much you see in their eyes, they may see the same in yours. patrick's fingers finish the knot. he straightens it.

-

'and so keats is faced with a crossroads. _do i wake or sleep?_ he's come to a realization of sorts, by the end of the poem. he begins in this dreamlike state, wanders his way to despair, and now- now, the music is gone. whatever has brought this awakening, it is past. all that's left is him and his thoughts, and now he has to make a decision.'

the front row looks like they're considering, at least. that's all brian can really ask. the bell rings and he is about to assign homework when one patrick gill parts the flow of highschoolers like moses did the red sea. his throat button is fastened. he did it for brian, then. (he's trying to puzzle over this information and invite patrick in at the same time when he bumps his knee on his desk, so he puts it out of mind-)

patrick sits atop a desk and crosses his legs at the knee; the movement draws up his trouser leg so as to expose his ankle, the dark sock that clings to his bones. brian allows himself a moment to stare.

'patrick,' he says, his voice in what he hopes is an acceptable range for lunch with a colleague.

'pat, actually.'

'ah.'

his hands- oh, his hands! brian could write sonnets about those hands- go up to his hair, to run his fingers through it, brian thinks, to collect himself; and he realizes when they arrive that it's still pulled back. he scowls, and he unties the ribbon with a swift tug.

'i mean, uh, you can call me pat.'

brian nods. pat's hands dive into his hair. it's a sight.

'listen, i-'

they clench around twin fistfuls.

'i think i might be-'

he's winding his hair around his fingers and he's twisting and brian's closer than before. brian's sitting on his desk. mirroring.

'what i'm trying to say is-'

his hands still and they relax, the corded muscle and harsh lines of his knuckles, the tension and the release-

'brian-'

his eyes, so dark and all-consuming, eyes fit for drowning-

brian leans forward first, and he tilts his head so it's obvious what he means by it; he parts his lips and he tilts his head so his hair falls just so, so he can meet pat's eyes with his own and conjure up something that looks handsome, something to keep pat looking at him like that for a few moments more. (his mouth feels so much lovelier than brian could've imagined. he didn't have it right in his dreams. not even close.)

'pat,' he whispers, right up against his lips, because he can't bear for their mouths to part.

brian reaches into his hair. brian reaches into his mouth. brian feels him shudder and inhale and exhale and gasp like they're one, like they'll always be part of each other so long as brian's hands stay tangled up in his hair and pat's hands stay encircling his waist, like they're two halves of something that breathes together, like their hearts beat together.

'i think i'm in love with you,' pat says once they part. his cheeks are rosy and his eyes are alight and one hand moves from the curve of brian's hip to the length of his tie, holds it loosely.

brian laughs, giddy, breathless, the trill of a nightingale. 'i should hope so.' (pat's answering chuckle is low and dusky and musical, and brian kisses him for it. brian kisses him! he does it once more, for the novelty. their glasses clink against each other.)

-

pat's hair isn't tied back yet. brian cut his own hair off, when he graduated college. decided it wasn't befitting a professor and chopped it, unceremoniously, with his sewing scissors.

pat takes his cup of coffee and sets it on the armoire and fills brian's hands with himself, the not-quite-curves of him, and starts to button brian's shirt; he loops the tie around his neck and kisses him on the mouth and centers the knot at the base of brian's throat. there's a purple bruise peeking out above his collar. brian reaches out to thumb it and feel him shiver.

'we're late,' pat says.

'we are,' brian agrees.

the sunrise is coming through the bedroom window and pat's rough hands are cupping his face and he's giving brian that big roguish grin of his, that unbridled happiness- he's pure heaven, pat gill, and brian's determined to thank him properly for it.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> just a little smthn
> 
> (im not the first person to write abt gay academics and reference ode to a nightingale so if u liked this i highly recommend [history student falls in love with astro-physics student](https://boykeats.tumblr.com/post/184001912197/history-student-falls-in-love-with-astrophysics) and pretty boy by keaton st james bc he does romance like nobody else)


End file.
